Young people from Australia, Great Britain, Denmark and the USA were among the victims. The operator of a backpacker hostel was arrested in the city of Vang Vieng, where the source of the poisoned drinks is suspected.
Vientiane. In the landlocked Southeast Asian state of Laos, six foreign tourists have died in the past few days after drinking contaminated alcoholic beverages. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced the death of a second young Australian woman on Friday. On Thursday, her best friend and travel companion died in Laos, having also consumed drinks that appeared to have impaired her alcohol.
The British Foreign Office on Thursday confirmed the death of a British woman from the same cause. According to media reports, the woman was 28 years old and a lawyer. This means that within a few days, six tourists from the West have died in the tropical country with around eight million inhabitants after drinking highly toxic drinks. In addition to the Australian and the British woman, there are so far two Danes and one male US citizen.
Night party in Vang Vieng
According to British and Australian media reports, the deceased was among about a dozen tourists who developed symptoms of methanol poisoning after a late-night party in the popular resort of Vang Vieng on November 12. Methanol is chemically closely related to the alcohol that ethanol drinks, but it is much more toxic in the sense that drinking even small amounts has acute or life-threatening consequences.
According to Australian media reports, at least two Australians (both 19) were staying at Brú Nana Backpackers in Vang Vieng. So, they first got drunk at the pub on November 12 and then went out. The next day the hostel staff took them to the hospital. They were transferred to a better equipped hospital in Bangkok (Thailand), where they nevertheless died.
The hospital in Bangkok where the two 19-year-old women died. APA / AFP / Chanakarn Laosarakham
The operator of Nana Backpackers Hostel in Vang Vieng has been arrested and questioned, the Laos Tourist Police confirmed. At first, it was not clear which drinks were poisonous, who served them and who produced them.
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Warnings in travel advisories
In their travel advice for Laos, Australia, Great Britain and other countries warn of the risk of methanol poisoning from adulterated drinks, which apparently occur frequently in the country.
Methanol (CH3OH), produced industrially in large quantities from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is used in industrial and household products such as antifreeze and paint, paint thinner, solvents, cleaning products, engine fuel, fuel cells, and so on. Methanol is much cheaper to produce than ethanol (C2H5OH), which is produced for drinking purposes in the well-known process of alcoholic fermentation and possibly distillation and is therefore a component of beer, wine, schnapps and whiskey. Beverages can be adulterated from methanol and various flavorings, or existing spirits can be diluted by adding methanol.
Horror for the liver
However, methanol is broken down differently in the liver than ethanol. This creates the metabolic intermediates formaldehyde and formic acid, which are inherently extremely harmful, and then formic acid is only broken down or excreted by the body very slowly. Methanol or formic acid damages the nervous system, brain and eyes and can cause permanent liver damage, blindness and death from respiratory paralysis, as little as 25 to 100 milliliters (or 0.5 to 1 gram in per kilogram of body weight) depending on body weight and state of health can represent a life-threatening dose. You do not notice for a long time the onset of drunkenness because the symptoms are similar to the symptoms of “normal” drunkenness before they get out of hand, so to speak.
Interestingly enough, the typical treatment for methanol poisoning is to introduce ethanol into the body, certainly through drinks. The alcohol consumed is preferentially broken down by the responsible enzymes in the liver; then they no longer “care” about the attack of methanol, which does not break down in the poisons mentioned above, but is not decompressed over time by urine, breathing air and sweat is eliminated. Depending on the degree of poisoning, the patient is kept in an intoxicated state for several days with a blood alcohol level between about half per thousand and 1 per thousand. There are also medications that inhibit the breakdown of methanol and support blood purification.
A worldwide phenomenon
Individual deaths, but especially waves of poisoning caused by drinks containing methanol, occur repeatedly around the world, from Russia to Serbia, from Libya to Mexico, from Turkey to Nigeria. India is particularly affected, where several to hundreds of people have died from individual poisoning waves in recent years, for example more than 300 people in Bangalore in 1981. This June there were more than 65 methanol deaths in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
As a result, 68 people died in Estonia in 2001 and more than 40 were left with long-term injuries. About 50 people died from alcohol poisoning in one incident in Cambodia in 2011, 38 in the Czech Republic in 2012, 45 in Malaysia in 2018, and at least 30 in the Samara region of southern Russia in May/June 2023. (ag./wg)
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